The Age Of Destiny
by ThatWasDumbButThat'sOkay
Summary: Steven Grant Rogers met Adaline Marie Bowman on a windy June day in 1939 at the ripe, young age of twenty. Which was exactly why he was so blindsided when he saw her again in a cab across the street – looking exactly the same age – in 2017. [based on the film 'The Age Of Adaline', which you do not need to have watched to read this.]
1. Jennifer Larson

**A/N:** **Darcy Lewis was born Adaline Bowman in 1888, and after a car crash at age 25 she stopped ageing.**

 **You can imagine Adaline/Darcy as either Blake Lively (who plays Adaline) or Kat Dennings (who plays Darcy). Other than the specific changing of Adaline's hair in the 'present day' from blonde to brunette (so that it makes sense that, until recently, her alias was Darcy Lewis - who is a brunette) I don't really make any specific descriptions that rules out either actress - not that they look drastically different anyway.**

* * *

On December 31st, 2017, a taxi cab travelled through San Francisco, from Chinatown to Marin. The car carried a single passenger - a woman. Her birth name; Adaline Bowman. Current alias; Jennifer Larson.

This is the first and last chapter of her story.

Stepping out of the cab, the young woman pays her fare and gives a decent tip before walking to the front door of the towering apartment building in front of her. Reaching out to press a button, she is immediately buzzed in. It wasn't her building, and yet she makes her way up the stairs as if this is a task she has completed many times before.

She's an attractive woman, something a tenant notices as they pass her on the stairs; long brown hair falling around her wool-coat covered shoulders, creamy pale skin dusted with a hint of pink from the chill outside, and a sunny kind of warmth in her smile that very few people possess. This smile, however, appeared far too rare for someone as young as she looked, because, despite appearances, her life had been far from short and sweet.

Finally reaching the floor she was searching for, the woman easily walks to apartment 24's door and knocks, said door swinging open soon after.

There is a beat of silence as the two people look at each other.

"Sorry, you just gotta be quiet. My dad - he's still sleeping, he works nights." A fairly young man explains his silence with a bashful smile and a hushed voice, swinging the door open wider. "C'mon in."

Stepping in, Adaline closes the door quietly before following the boy to another room.

"I, uh, finished the colour seps and the digital printing last night. I pulled some line art from the internet and printed the imperfections." Adaline glances around the room, simply curious, as the boy stands from his computer, proudly brandishing her new forms of identification. "See, that's kinda my secret, the dust marks and the discoloration. No one's gonna question that detail in a million years."

Handing them over to her, he can't help but flirt awkwardly with the beautiful woman as she examines the passports and driving licences.

"So, why 25? I mean, if I were you, I'd shave a couple of years off – you could _definitely_ get away with it."

Adaline glances up at him, accepting the compliment with a small smile, fairly impressed with his work.

"You're very kind, Tony," she hands over the owed money as she answers. "Nice work."

Their business over, they step back out of the room and into the hallway.

"It was a pleasure doing business with you. If any of your friends ever need anything-"

"Why are you doing this?"

Cutting him off, Adaline walks down the small hallway as he follows to show her out, his answer clearly confused.

"Come again?"

"You're a smart kid, forgery's a felony. $250,000 fine - _six years_ in jail."

The facts fall from her lips casually, as if said often, which instils a panic in the young man.

"Shit, you're... You're a cop?"

Adaline chuckles lightly, shaking her head and placing her purchases in her bag as she stops at the door and turns to face him.

"No, I'm about as far from law enforcement as you can get," she glances up, looking at the boy with a soft, almost sad smile. "I just hate to see wasted potential, Jeff."

"Tony. It's Tony."

Adaline smirks, tilting her head slightly and giving him some parting advice. "The autographed baseballs in your bedroom... Made out to 'Jeff'. Don't get sloppy, it's the little things that trip you up."

Flashing him one more quick smile, Adaline opens the door and leaves, her low heels clicking softly as she makes her way back to the stairs.

* * *

 **A/N: So, I'm just testing the waters at this point to see if anyone else is interested in this idea. I mean, I'll probably still write it if not, but I don't think I'll be as motivated if it's only me so it'll probably take a lot longer. So make sure to leave a comment if you want more!**

 **P.S. the majority of this chapter is, like, cut and pasted from the film - don't worry, this does not reflect the way the rest of the fic will go, I just need to establish Adaline and her background like they do in the film before I can start adding the Marvel content. It shouldn't be too long!**


	2. Von Lehman

**A/N: I had to change the year of Adaline's birth so that I could fit her story in with Steve and Bucky's the way that I wanted it to. So, while in the film she was born in 1908 (I think?), in my version it's 20 years earlier. This means that the Golden Gate Bridge's construction years have been changed - just so you know.**

* * *

Adaline Marie Bowman was born at 12:01am, January 1st, 1888, at Children's Hospital, San Francisco, the only child of Faye and Milton Bowman.

On June 16th, 1908, just as Adaline Bowman and her mother stopped to admire the expanse, where many years hence construction would be finished on the Golden Gate Bridge, a young engineer displayed uncommon gallantry.

" _No, mother. Honestly, I'm perfectly fine; I still have a decade – at least – before anyone can consider me a spinster, surely!"_

 _The last word leads off to a chuckle, which her mother rolls her eyes at with an affectionate smile._

" _I just worry about you, Addy, you know that. I only want you to be happ—"_

 _She's cut off by Adaline's small squeal as her hat is finally ripped from her head by the wind. It had threatened to go a few times, but the three hairpins holding it down had managed to keep it in place – for a while, at least._

 _Turning to chase after her hat, Adaline sees it fly towards the water's edge before being captured by a pair of hands. Her eyes move upwards from the hands – which are now reshaping her hat and brushing off any dirt – to bare forearms, rolled up shirt-sleeves, and, finally, to the very handsome face of her hat's rescuer._

 _When she catches up to him her smile is a little breathless – from a combination of the jog over and the good looks of the man in front of her – but that doesn't matter to her when she receives one in return. His eyes betraying that he was just as awestruck by her as she was him, he steps forward to offer her the hat._

 _She takes it with a small 'thank you', flashing him another bashful, but grateful, smile, completely oblivious to her mother's proud, know-it-all smirk a few feet behind her._

Eighty-seven days later Adaline married Clarence James Prescott, at Old Saint Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. Three years after that, Adaline gave birth to a baby girl. They named her Flemming, after Adaline's paternal grandmother.

On February 17th, 1916 eight workers and two engineers lost their lives when a section of scaffolding fell through a safety net during construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. Among the deceased was Adaline's husband.

 _As she sat in the church, staring up at her husband's coffin, Adaline felt her heart break all over again. What use were funerals, if all they did was remind you that your loved one was dead? She didn't know, but it was a necessary evil, and, perhaps, in the long run, she'd be grateful they'd gotten to say goodbye._

" _We'll be okay," she mutters quietly into her daughter's hair as she tucks Flemming's head under her chin, terrified that she'd just uttered the biggest lie of her life. "We have each other." That one, at least, she knew to be true._

Ten months after her husband's death Adaline was driving north to her parents' beach cottage, where 5-year-old Flemming was waiting up for her, when something highly unusual occurred, something almost magical... Snow fell in Sonoma County, California.

 _At first Adaline had found herself a little entranced by the snow – it was beautiful, and something rarely seen by her. Now, however, she was cursing it. She could barely see out of the window to where she was going, the very small wiper doing little to clear her view, and her car was rattling awfully as she drove over bumpy terrain she hadn't expected and, therefore, hadn't slowed down for._

 _She cursed the snow even more when she finally saw something through her windshield… A fence._

 _Swerving at the last minute, Adaline tries to prevent the inevitable, but it's too late. The wooden fence gives way easily to the vehicle as it crashes through, tilting on its side and losing no speed._

 _As the car rolls down the hill, Adaline finds herself thrown right and up, then left and down, over and over again, her seatbelt only just managing to hold her in the car. It was all happening very quickly, but she could feel every injury as it was inflicted, and her only thought was a prayer that this would end soon._

 _Which it did, as she found herself submersed in freezing cold water. Her car was sinking in a lake, with her contained in it._

The immersion in the frigid water caused Adaline's body to go into an anoxic reflex; instantly stopping her breathing and slowing her heartbeat. Within 2 minutes, Adaline Bowman's core temperature had dropped to 87 degrees. Her heart stopped beating.

At 8:55 a bolt of lightning struck the vehicle, discharging half a billion volts of electricity and producing 60,000 amperes of current.

Its effect was threefold.

First, the charge defibrillated Adaline Bowman's heart.

 _The black into which she had previously sunk was suddenly pulled away as her body screamed at her from all over. Opening her eyes, Adaline manages to push herself up and automatically starts swimming to the surface of the water in search of air._

Second, she was jolted out of her anoxic state causing her to draw her first breath in 2 minutes.

 _She is still trapped in her car, but her head has broken the water's surface, and, after coughing up a lungful of water, she can breathe. Adaline has never felt more grateful for those horrendously boring swimming lessons she'd had with her father as a child._

 _With thoughts of Flemming on her mind – she had already lost one parent this year, she needn't lose another – Adaline pulls herself up and through the open window of her half-sunken car, managing to drag herself out and swim to the muddy edge of the water._

 _She pulls herself along the ground for a short while, but exhaustion eventually takes over and she drops, lying still and simply grateful to be alive._

Third, based on Von Lehman's principle of electron compression in deoxyribonucleic acid, which will be discovered in the year 2035, Adaline Bowman will henceforth be immune to the ravages of time. She will never age another day.

* * *

 **A/N: Ok so the science behind this is ridiculous but like... I'm not gonna try to find a different explanation so I'm using the one from the film.**

 **Again, a lot of this is straight from the film - which will probably be par for the course for at least the next couple of chapters, but after we've covered Adaline's history (and current situation in the 'present day') it'll diverge massively from the original story.**


End file.
